


heavenly vignettes

by rfsmiley



Series: Heavenly Host universe [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, First Time, Getting Together, M/M, Pining, Pregnancy, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Theology, apparently i live in this universe permanently now, but also original character death, chance encounters, do i need to tag that if they're immortal?, exploitation of the british museum gallery maps for fun and profit, just kidding about the profit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-05 18:39:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18371828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rfsmiley/pseuds/rfsmiley
Summary: A series of snapshots regarding an angel, a demon, and the human experience. Takes place in the Heavenly Host universe.





	1. 3:18 a.m.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd love to be chill and say you don't need to have read Heavenly Host for these, but there might be some missing context. Still, it can probably stand on its own. Let's find out, shall we?

If anyone had asked Aziraphale before the summer of 2018 whether he loved Crowley, that person would have gotten an airy response. Well, of course, my dear, he would have replied. He was an angel after all, and angels were beings of love. And how could you not love Crowley? He had impeccable taste in wine; he shared food, and indeed often ordered food he didn't even want, simply for the purpose of sharing it; he was kind to animals, and vicious to people who weren’t; and deep down, Aziraphale felt certain that he was really a goodhearted soul, overall, and yes, in spite of being a demon, which was really just an unfortunate matter of circumstance. (Not that he would have ever vocalized this last. Heaven did have standards.)

And did Crowley love him? Well, this was less solid footing. Aziraphale had never really pondered the question. Although, did one really seize a companion’s hand at the end of all things, armed with a mere tire iron, to face down the Morningstar Himself, if there wasn’t some affection?

Of course, that had been in the name of saving the world. How selfish, how foolish, to think any of it might have been for him.  

But then this had happened.

Aziraphale, lying sleepless, touched the swell of his stomach with resignation. Somewhere inside this fragile human form, another life was taking shape; the notion should have filled him with wonder, with awe at the profundity of Creation, but instead he felt tired. Unlike the almost-Apocalypse, he thought, this ordeal was horribly personal. Only one person, after all, could bear a child.

Yet he still was not alone. He had cried out for help, and Crowley, summoned in an hour of need, had not even hesitated.

He looked at the shape in the bed beside him. The demon, he was learning, slept like a dead thing. Some nights, Aziraphale dared to place a hand on his sternum and, holding his breath, would try to gauge if the ribcage was even moving. It was not unlike sharing a bed with a corpse, except that sometimes an arm would snake out and tighten around one of the angel’s limbs, like an ardent boa.

Tonight, however, he was keeping his hands to himself. The lithe figure was sprawled face down in the pillows, perfectly still, only half covered by the duvet. Aziraphale gazed down at the unkempt hair, the sinuous arc of the spine. He tried to imagine lying here by himself, in the darkness, without this familiar and comforting presence somewhere nearby. Frankly, the idea was abhorrent.

Really, Aziraphale mused, there was no way he could have done this on his own. Without assistance. Or, well, call a spade a spade: without him.

He had tried to say as much, once, belatedly. The words had not come out properly. He had struggled on, beating against the current, but the demon had reddened and, averting his eyes, cut him off.

 _“You don’t need to thank me,”_ he had said. _“It’s us. It’s always been us, I mean.”_

And Aziraphale had thought, in wonderment:

_I have been blind._

In that moment, for the first time, he had understood the truth. Crowley did love him. In fact, Aziraphale suddenly saw that Crowley had probably loved him all along, with a ferocity and a loyalty that had somehow gone unnoticed for years, perhaps even millennia.

It was crushingly humbling knowledge.

It was also unsettling. Aziraphale suspected that there was more to learn, more that thus far had also gone unsaid and unseen. The intuition surfaced from a hundred little things: the way Crowley stiffened when their legs brushed together in a crowded restaurant; the way he offered his arm awkwardly in the park; the way Aziraphale raised his eyes from his book sometimes to find those glittering yellow eyes on him, a pensive, secretive look on the demon’s face. It was even in this shared bed with them, even now, even tonight.

He sighed, tearing his eyes away from the sleeping figure. Everything was changing. What did one even say? “My dear, I’m starting to think you might be in love with me?”

He rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. This was not a useful way to spend the night, he thought, disgusted with himself. For heaven's sake, he should be _sleeping._ Since, apparently, sleep was necessary for a fetus.

As if in agreement, there was a sudden movement below his navel.

Aziraphale froze.

A minute passed, perhaps two. He held himself still, wondering if he had imagined it. And then, abruptly, it came again, a sharp and utterly foreign sensation. As if he had been struck like a bell from within.

“Crowley,” he breathed.

His companion did not move. His stomach did. Aziraphale laughed a little, wildly.

“My dear, wake up,” he whispered, reaching over, shaking the sleeping demon.

“Hnnngk,” said Crowley, and then he groaned, lifting his tousled head. “Aziraphale, no. It’s three in the morning.”

“The baby,” said Aziraphale, wonderingly. A fourth flutter rippled under his skin.

Yellow eyes gleamed suddenly in the darkness. “What?”

“It’s _moving._ ”

“Is it – are you –”

“Fine, I’m fine, everything’s fine,” said Aziraphale hurriedly, feeling guilty under the intensity of that stare. Suddenly his news seemed insignificant, and he went on in a small voice. “It’s – I think it’s kicking.”

“What?” said Crowley, in a completely different tone.

“Here – feel –”

Crowley held his gaze for a long moment, and then he came closer, the blankets shifting to make room for their bodies, suddenly flush. His hand stole under Aziraphale’s shirt, palm on the great dome of his belly. Aziraphale helpfully moved it a little to the left and they waited, hardly breathing.

It only took a few seconds before the kick came again, harder than it had yet been. He heard the demon’s sharp inhalation with satisfaction.

“ _Wild,_ ” Crowley said, fascinated, looking down at him. His eyes looked more reptilian than ever in the shadows, shining with an almost hungry fire.

He was close enough to lean in for a kiss, Aziraphale realized. He felt heat flame into his cheeks at the unexpected thought, and he shifted, suddenly woozy. Thank goodness, the demon didn’t appear to notice his flush. Perhaps it was too dark.

Of course, he was also palpably distracted. As the angel watched, his hand traced an unconscious circle on the naked stomach, before pushing a little, daringly, on the pale taut skin. Aziraphale shivered, and then squeaked as he felt another, more vehement kick, as if in answer. Crowley actually laughed.

“Feisty,” he commented.

"Well, with you baiting it like that," retorted Aziraphale, a little breathless.

The demon frowned, peering down at him with new concern, as if he had begun to realize something was wrong. "Does it hurt?" he asked.

"No," said Aziraphale. He was being truthful. The sensations prickling across his belly were nothing like pain.

Mollified, Crowley hummed a little as he moved his hand, lightly, searchingly. As it passed over him, the angel was reminded irresistibly of a snake's tongue flickering over some unknown object, smelling it, learning its contours. Then the vision faded, replaced by an extremely acute awareness of Crowley, the present, human-bodied Crowley, whose face was inches away, whose body was warm and close under blankets that suddenly seemed stifling. He shivered again under the skating fingertips. 

The hand stilled. The yellow eyes slitted. Aziraphale, who had a quick flash of appreciation for the complete absurdity of his situation – lying prone, in a still-foreign and very pregnant body, in a bed with a demon – closed his eyes, hoping that his blush was still hidden by the night.

He felt Crowley draw away; the mattress shifted, and the searing touch was gone.

“Well,” the demon said gruffly. “Congratulations. I’m awake.”

“I’m sorry,” said Aziraphale, suddenly penitent. “Poor dear, you were sleeping, and I –”

“Aziraphale,” said that familiar voice. “It’s fine.”

He opened his eyes again, to find Crowley still watching him, a curious interplay of emotion coloring the gold of his gaze. Aziraphale tugged his shirt back down, nervously. That stare really was impossible to read.

“You weren’t sleeping, were you?” said the demon shrewdly.

“No,” he admitted.

“Shall I get up?” Crowley asked, not unkindly. “Put the kettle on?”

“Oh, no,” and now Aziraphale was ashamed. How petty, to wake him for something so trivial. “Please don’t.”

In answer, the demon yawned, and then the knife of his smile was visible even in the dark. “All right,” he said, moving under the duvet, coming closer again.

Aziraphale tensed. He was expecting the touch, and yet it was still a surprise, as it was every night, the demon’s arm ghosting across him as Crowley settled himself. To his embarrassment, he perceived for the first time that his shirt had slid down on one side, almost wantonly; he felt the demon’s breath for a moment on the bare shoulder, like a caress.

“Go to sleep, angel,” Crowley chided softly, reading the worry in his body. “The kid can wait.”

But Aziraphale was not concerned about the baby.

He lay silent, unblinking, as his companion grew still. To his bafflement, it only took a few minutes before the demon was wholly asleep again, his mouth pressed absently against Aziraphale’s skin, his hair dark on the pillow, his arm a heavy and dizzying weight under which Aziraphale dared not move, for fear it might withdraw and leave him bereft.

If anyone had asked him at that moment whether he loved Crowley, he realized, astonished, he wouldn’t have been able to answer at all.

 


	2. Meringue (Reprise)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem that Aziraphale thinks of is Dover Beach, by Matthew Arnold, a poem that was written for and about him and Crowley, and you can’t change my mind.

Crowley was both present and not present in the weeks following their return to London. He did appear to be perfectly willing to take up a temporary residence in Aziraphale’s flat, even lacking spoken invitation. He also, to the angel's quiet relief, came to the single bed as casually as if they had never slept apart in six thousand years. Aziraphale, conversely, found that he no longer even had the inclination to sleep, but pretended that he did, for the sake of having that comforting weight on the other side of the mattress, a fleeting illusion that nothing had changed.

But of course, it had.

For one thing, Crowley rose earlier now. He had never been a morning person, but most days, Aziraphale actually watched him get up before dawn. As if by agreement, he then left the angel to spend the day alone with his books, his tea, and the increasingly claustrophobic shop. He never said a word about what he did all day, never mentioned how he managed to fill the long hours between sunrise and sunset; Aziraphale discovered that he was afraid to ask. He was simply grateful that the demon did return, once it had gotten dark, usually with takeout, always with wine.

At some point, he realized that he was being given room to grieve.

He appreciated it. Or well, he thought he did. But it was strangely painful too. Some nights, he looked over at the motionless shape beside him, distant even in the narrow bed, and found himself thinking about Boston. Fingers on his stomach in the dark. Great white swan wings, reflected in water. The sensation of being kissed, almost chastely, standing by a big bay window, in the moonlight.

He had given up a child. The knowledge hurt. He would carry the weight of it for the rest of his immortal life. But he was beginning to worry that he had given up something else too, something which did not yet have a name.

And then, on a clear afternoon, while Crowley was out, Aziraphale closed his book and looked up, staring around the shop with an unseeing eye.

He had, he found, the faint beginnings of an idea.

*

It was difficult to make a pie crust from scratch. Aziraphale already knew, from experience, that he was not good at it, and he tried to work slowly, hoping that caution would make up for his lack of skill. His mind, however, kept wandering, and as he cut the cold butter into pieces, measured out the flour, carefully poured a teaspoon of salt, he found himself reminiscing about the advent of pies in the twelfth century. Heavens, but that was long ago. Sometime before the plague had come to England, if he recalled correctly. He wondered if Crowley remembered those inaugural pies, if he had ever tried one. He honestly had no idea. Their Arrangement had been in its infancy, in those years. They had only rarely dined together.

So much wasted time. Centuries of wasted time, in fact. Aziraphale forcefully rolled out the dough.

By the time he moved on to the filling, it was already getting dark. He found himself listening for the sound of keys. It took far too long, as it always did, but at last, as he cut the lemons, he heard the bolt slide back, and the quiet tread of footsteps on the stairs. Then there was a crash and a curse in the hallway, announcing the arrival of Crowley, laden down with bags. The room filled with the scent of marinara and garlic.

They greeted each other softly as the demon crossed to their dining set, where he sat and unpacked the containers, laying things out almost fussily. Aziraphale watched him out of the corner of his eye. He felt a nagging hunger, one that had nothing to do with Italian food, as he drank the figure in, vital and handsome in a blood-red shirt left unbuttoned at the collar, its sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His eyes lingered on the exposed throat, the bare forearms, the fingers whose touch he had known well, for a little while, at least.

He went back to his pie.

Crowley finished arranging the table and came into the galley kitchen. There was hardly room for two, but, the angel reflected, that had never stopped him from weaseling his way into spaces before. “Meringue?” he inquired, peering over Aziraphale's shoulder.

“Yes," said Aziraphale, and Crowley was quiet.

He added the ingredients slowly, separating the eggs, whisking in the yolks. He could feel his audience, now leaning against the counter behind him, watching. His heart was beating quickly, the fear and the hope thickening in his veins, rather like the mixture he was tending. You foolish angel, he thought, staring down into it. You silly, silly old fool.

At last, he turned the stove off. He took a deep breath. And then he dipped a finger deliberately into the filling, and he turned.

“My dear,” he said softly. They were already close together. It really was a horribly narrow kitchen.

Crowley was staring at him.

Aziraphale swallowed, and brought his finger nervously to Crowley’s lips.

He saw, in an instant, that the demon understood.

The yellow eyes blazed. In one sinuous motion, Crowley had pushed the hand aside and closed the distance between them, hands cradling his face, and Aziraphale was suddenly drowning, all the air leaving his lungs as he gasped under the hot and demanding mouth. The wild, disjointed thought came that it was still so strange, to be in this little body, so much smaller than the one bent over him, hands now in his hair, lips now on his throat. And then he let go, and closed his eyes, and thrilled to it. He was flooded with gratitude so profound that it was like prayer.

“Are you sure?” the demon breathed, into the hollow under his jaw.

“I love you,” Aziraphale whispered. It was so simple to say it, so impossibly easy. He could not believe, now, that it had taken him this long. He said it again, simply because he could, simply because he should have never failed to say it in the first place. “I love you, I love you, I – of course I’m sure.”

Crowley was still. Then, carefully, he tilted the angel’s face up to his and kissed him until Aziraphale, dizzy, made a noise of protest. He found that he was clinging weakly to the crimson shirt, leaving ugly, sticky marks from the pie filling. Its owner didn’t even seem to care.

They stumbled out of the little galley kitchen together. Aziraphale was still finding it difficult to breathe as Crowley backed him slowly down the hall, apparently unwilling to let go of him. He finally managed to draw a shaking breath when they were brought up short against the unyielding arm of the sofa, a corduroy settee, one that he knew the demon loathed. Personally, he had never been so grateful to sink down onto its cushions.

He looked up, meeting Crowley's gaze, feeling his pulse jump. Perhaps there was something else he was supposed to say, before this happened. Something clever, that would ease the tension in the air. He had no idea what it might be.

Crowley hesitated, as if also searching for words, and then simply came after him, eyes shining in the dark. The familiar weight of his body pressed the angel down, and down, and down.

It was utterly unlike the night in the alley.

Well, of course it would be, Aziraphale reflected. Yet still he marveled at how different it was. He had feared that the trauma of that evening would ruin the wonder of this one, if it ever came, but he realized, now, under Crowley’s careful touch, that he needn’t have worried at all. He trusted this other in a way that could not be spoken, and he sank back under the beloved hands, letting six thousand years bear them gently to shore. A phrase came into his mind, something he had read once, something about a sea of faith. For a moment, his ears were full of a long and melancholy roar. He pressed his lips to Crowley's temple, trying to remember. _Ah, love, let us be true to one another._

But his attention was needed elsewhere. They were undressing each other, now, like mortals, in fact like young and inexperienced mortals, made inelegant by the urgency of desire and fear. Buttons stuck, belts snagged, sleeves lengthened impossibly. Aziraphale found that he was growing almost impatient. The demon kept stopping to kiss him, to murmur into his hair, to touch his jawline with trembling fingers, tracing temptation on his skin. Impulse struck, and he caught one of them in his mouth: bashfully, boldly. The golden eyes dilated, like a bewildered cat’s, and he felt a rush of satisfaction before their mouths were sealed together again.

And then he was looking up at the ceiling, and the demon was nosing into his naked belly, serpentine. Aziraphale's dizziness had returned. He shut his eyes. He would not, he thought, do this for another living soul.

He made the requisite effort.

It was like touching a match to paper. Alien yearning suddenly seized him, every spark in his body leaping up into flame, every cell crying out a wordless question. A moment later, he felt Crowley's quiet, reverential breath against his navel, and he cracked an eye, glancing down at the dark fall of hair against his skin.

For a long minute, neither moved. Then the demon pressed a worshipful mouth to his hip – oh, blasphemous creature, thought Aziraphale, who was shivering now – and looked up, an answer burning in the yellow of his gaze.

Aziraphale touched his face.

It was all the affirmation he needed to give. Slowly, cautiously, his lover brought their bodies together, a strange and miraculous joining of the sacred and the profane. He inhaled, letting his head fall back, feeling the sharp, insatiable push. It was almost like pain, he thought, wonderingly.

Then he corrected himself: no. It was nothing like pain at all.

Crowley came to him, silently, shifting him into the cushions. Aziraphale looked up at him and did not look away.

*

They never did finish the pie.


	3. Chance Encounter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's at least one more of these after this...

According to Pepper, five was too young to properly appreciate the British Museum. Adam, however, simply shrugged in answer to her protests. They had the whole weekend in London, he pointed out; what else where they going to do?

She rolled her eyes as he bought the tickets, but she said nothing more, and in they went.

They started with the Easter Island head, its stern, all-knowing features glaring out over the crowds. Adam could tell that Lucy was a little afraid of it, and he put her on his shoulders, attempting to embolden her. She, however, clamored to be put right down again for the Assyrian lion hunts, which he saw would be the favorites of the day; she put her face up close against the bas-reliefs, looking intently at the raging beasts, and he laughed when she mimicked the snarls. Then, at last, beginning to flag a little, they climbed the stairs to the Lewis chessmen, the ancient yellowed ivories laid out in rows. Lucy pointed out the kings, and Pepper laughed with her over their bug-eyed fury. Adam, watching them both, thought smugly that he had been right. Five was not too young at all.

When they finally came to the Rosetta stone, that towering monument of ingenuity, Lucy quieted and reached for her father’s hand. He felt her sticky fingers close on his as they walked around it, observing the myriad scripts. Glancing down at her, he wondered if she could feel the weight of history there in the room with them, its powerful pull, its connective threads weaving her little life, and Pepper’s too, into the one great tapestry of human achievement.

And then there was him, he reflected. A lone aberration, stuck in like a burr in the wool.

“I’m hungry,” Lucy announced, shattering his reverie, and Pepper opened her purse.

Minutes later, they were recuperating in the café area, sharing a prepackaged brownie between the three of them, and Adam was musing that sugar did manage to ease the burden of being alone.

Ironically, that was when he saw her.

She was, at first blush, unremarkable. She was just a small young woman, college-aged, with dark curls cropped to her earlobes, reading a gallery map. When she looked up at the signs, frowning, Adam caught a glimpse of her brilliant eyes, an eerie stormy blue. He thought they looked almost otherworldly. The color rang a quiet, chiming bell in some corner of his mind. He had seen those eyes before, in someone else’s face, although he couldn’t quite think whose.

It was not her eyes, however, that had caught his attention. He could see, the longer he looked at her, that the girl herself was all wrong. She was too bright, like an overexposed photo, shining against the dull colors of the museum. It was a bit like looking into the sun.

No, Adam thought, with a shock of understanding: it was like looking into the mirror.

For a moment he could do nothing but marvel at his own arrogance. Lone aberration, indeed, he thought, feeling the grin split his face. There were more things in heaven and earth, apparently, than he had yet managed to dream of. And for a certain entity named Adam Young, that was really saying a lot.

Pepper looked at him curiously as he shoved his chair back. Then her expression changed. She knew that look, knew it spelled trouble, even if she hadn’t yet seen the cause.

"Adam, wait," she said.

 “It’s fine,” Adam said, distractedly. The girl was walking away, and he craned his head, trying to see where she was going. “Just give me one minute.”

 “Adam,” she said, sharply, starting to get up as well. Her elbow knocked her purse and the remnants of brownie to the floor, scattering papers and crumbs.

 “Mom!” Lucy shrieked, distraught.

 “One minute,” Adam told them both, and he half ran from the café.

 For one awful moment, he was worried he had lost her, but, fortunately, the girl stood out in a crowd. Even besides that strange, ethereal quality, she was also the most painful embodiment of a tourist he had ever seen. Her novelty tee sported a stylized London Bridge, and her brilliantly sequined belt was, oh horror, patterned with the British flag. As she turned away from him again, still holding up her map and squinting at the signage, Adam observed that she also had a truly vile, highlighter-pink backpack; it was covered in buttons, baubles, bits of rainbow ribbon, and, notably, an iron-on badge that he could read even from across the room: I DON'T BRAKE FOR FASCISTS. He was trying to decide if Pepper would loathe her or love her when she rounded another corner and disappeared.

He sprinted after her, skidding into the next antechamber, and abruptly found himself almost on top of her. She, like Lucy before her, had been arrested by the Easter Island head, and had stopped just over the threshold to examine it, staring up at the solemn brow. Behind her, Adam tried to catch his breath, considering his next move.

Her gallery map caught his eye. She had folded it up and stuck it in her back pocket. A moment later, under Adam’s intent stare, it went fluttering to the floor.

He scooped it up and laid a hand on her shoulder.  

“Hey,” he said, trying to smile disarmingly, as those disconcerting eyes flicked up to his face. “Um, hi. You dropped this.”

“Huh?” she said, distracted. She was American, he realized. Interesting. “Oh, cool. Thanks.”

She turned to face him full on, accepting its return, and Adam saw, with perfect clarity, that his suspicion was correct: he had recognized himself in her. This girl was human, and yet she also was not, the oddity shimmering around her like the air over a candle. He knew, as if someone had shouted it in his ear, or maybe printed it on that garish novelty T-shirt, that at least one of her parents, whoever they were, had not been mortal.

"Can I help you, buddy?" she inquired, watching him examine her.

“You’re like me,” he said, finally, trying to sort through his complete astonishment. “But how?”

“Excuse me?”

“I had no idea,” he went on, grasping for words, growing excited. “This is amazing. All these years, and I thought I was the only one, I –”

“Listen, what the fuck are you talking about?” she demanded, suspiciously. Her eyes had narrowed. “You’re not American.”

Adam paused. She didn’t know. But that was insane. How could she not know?

"But you’re," he began, helplessly.

They stood staring at each other. He reviewed his options. None of them were good.

"Sorry," he said. He cleared his throat, rubbed an awkward hand over his mouth. "Sorry, sorry, my mistake. Your, ah, your eyes," and he gestured, grateful for the opportunity to backtrack. "They're very familiar. I must have thought you were someone else."

"My eyes," she repeated.

"Yeah," said Adam. He stuck his hands in his pockets. "They reminded me of - someone."

He realized that he still could not think who. That was unfortunate. Perhaps she wouldn’t ask.

She was still looking at him as if he had two heads, but there was something else in her expression now, a queer sort of eagerness tempering her dislike of him. "You're what, forty, forty-five?" she muttered, her eyes wandering over his face. Adam, stung, opened his mouth to say “Thirty-seven, _actually,_ ” but she cut him off. “I realize that this is a long shot, but your name wouldn’t happen to be Anthony, would it?”

“Anthony,” he echoed blankly. "No."

“Yeah." She had not seriously been expecting recognition. “Figures.”

And then Adam suddenly put two and two together. Incredulity left him breathless for a moment. “Wait,” he said. “Wait. As in, Anthony  _Crowley?_ ”

Her mouth fell open. “ _Jesus,_ ” she said, and Adam winced, “Do you _know_ him?”

“Ah," said the Antichrist, who was thinking, _Oh, shit._ "Well, no. Sort of. He works for my father." That much, at least, was true.

“Oh, please,” breathed the girl, her hand twitching, as if she was about to seize his arm. She stopped herself, with visible difficulty, and clenched her fists. “Please. I have to find him.”

"That,” he said, still being honest, as he looked down at her, "is probably a very bad idea."

"Please," she insisted. She was already unslinging her backpack. "Anything you can give me. An email, a phone number – I have a pen somewhere –"

"Hey, hey," said Adam, holding his hands up: _stop._ "I'm not your guy."

Her mouth opened again. Then she closed it. Pink roses of rage began to bloom in her cheeks.

"Seriously?" she said. "Seriously. You're the first person I've ever met who knows that fucking name, and you're not going to help me?"

"Listen, kid," said Adam, who was only just beginning to appreciate how little he’d thought any of this through, "I haven't seen Crowley in years. I probably couldn't help you find him even if I wanted to."

"Hmm," she mused, with mock sincerity. "Gee. Why don't I believe you?"

They regarded each other for a minute, two iron wills, each startled by the confrontation of an equal. Adam was increasingly dumbfounded as she matched him glare for glare, pure venom in her gaze. She was so _strong._ How the hell could she not _know?_

And then the girl blinked. She said, coolly, "All right, well, not that this wasn't fun, but," and leaving the sentence unfinished, she hoisted her backpack up and turned away.

“Wait,” Adam called after her. She was _another one,_ and she was just _leaving_ – “Hey. What’s your name?”

Those piercing storm-blue eyes looked back at him for a split second, filled with scorn. "Oh, as if, asshole," she retorted, disgusted, and then she was gone.

Adam exhaled, and then said, from the bottom of his heart, “Fuck.”

“Language, Papa,” said Pepper, from behind him.

He turned to look at her. She had Lucy balanced on a hip, and her purse gaped where it hung from a wrist, their tickets and gallery maps shoved in haphazardly. She had clearly not been willing to wait for him. Well, Pepper wasn’t really the waiting sort, Adam thought, and he grinned at her sheepishly.

“And who was that?” his wife inquired, amused, shifting her burdens as he reached for her.

“To be honest with you,” he said, kissing her cheek and lifting their daughter into his arms, “I have no earthly idea.”


	4. The Bulbs

Aziraphale was discorporated again in the same year that Paulina died. Crowley wasn't even surprised. She had been terribly distracted in the weeks after they returned from the memorial service, a suffocating ordeal at which they had stood silently in the back pew (Crowley's feet had blistered and wept over the course of the hour, but the pain was easier to bear than his companion's expression, and so he kept silent). According to the hysterical lorry driver, she had just stepped blindly into the street.

"Didn't even look," he kept repeating, his eyes glassy with shock. "She honestly didn't even look."

Crowley, summoned to identify the ruined body, thought dispassionately that it had better not take her ten bloody months to get a new one, the way it had last time.

He did regret the body. He had loved that body, in every sense of the word. To his own surprise, he even felt a pang of something like sorrow as he stepped out of the morgue and, with a snap of his fingers, vanished the corpse behind him.

On returning home, he discovered that, without her, their cottage was utterly quiet. The queer feeling of loss returned. It lacked her laugh, her light footsteps in the hall, her aggrieved mutters in the kitchen, a hundred other things that Crowley had listened to only inattentively, all suddenly piercingly absent. He turned on the television, just for the sake of having noise; even an inane laugh track was better than the silence. Then, after a moment's consideration, he turned and went abruptly to their well-stocked wine rack. It was only mid-afternoon, but who was there to see? Glass in hand, he wandered barefoot from room to room, drinking quickly, wanting to be drunk.

He paused in the angel’s study, looking down at the worn wingback chair. He tried to imagine the conversations that Aziraphale was having with headquarters, the words she would choose to excuse her own negligence. "Well, Gabriel, my human daughter's wife just died, you know, so I had a lot on my mind." An utterly humorless smile tugged at his lips as he drained his glass.

When he finished the first bottle, he opened a second, and then eventually a third.

He was deeply inebriated by the time he stumbled to the bedroom, where Crowley, who had not slept alone in fifty-eight years, made a second startling discovery. Their bed was too big. How had he never noticed before? Why had they even bought the damned thing? He was a speck in an ocean of sheets, tempest-tossed, navigating a tectonic plate of a mattress. Turning restlessly, he narrowed the frame and bumped the thread count again and again, trying to get comfortable. He even adjusted the temperature of the room, warming the air with a lazy, late-summer heat.

None of it mattered. He could not sleep.

He could not understand why.

Aziraphale had been through dozens of bodies since Eden. Crowley had, in fact, been present for several of their deaths. (The Crusades had not been much fun for either of them.) Yet his mind kept returning to this recent accident, like a child fretting at a wound. It was perplexing. The injuries of his lover’s body – the stiff dried blood distorting her hairline, the clear misalignment of a broken jaw – had not distressed him much in the moment. But, as he lay there, the details slowly etched themselves into his mind, until all he could see were her blue unseeing eyes.

He found himself thinking of the memorial service again. Paulina, too, had died in a car accident. She had been fifty-nine. He didn’t know what had happened to her body, exactly, and for this small mercy, he was grateful.

Dawn found him in the kitchen, at the window, drinking Aziraphale's tea and watching the light break over the chalk hills. Their garden was doing well, alive with bees among the foxgloves. The South Downs had been gifted with a long spring this year. Even the lilies were still blooming. He looked at their snowy petals, slowly suffusing with rose, as if they had been dipped in ink.

Unseeingly, he fished the teabag out of his cup. A thought was occurring to him, as gradual as the sunrise. Mug in hand, still barefoot, he stepped outside and picked his way across the garden to the shed.

He was satisfied by what he found.

He waited a few more days, until he was certain of what he wanted to do, and then he bought tickets to Boston.

*

It didn't take long for him to find the address. He paced slowly up the sidewalk, looking up at the house, all its lights ablaze. He could see her, this woman who did not know she was the daughter of an angel, curled on a sofa inside. Takeout boxes littered the table in front of her, but she was not eating. She was, to the casual observer, simply reading. Crowley, who was not a casual observer, saw within minutes that the pages did not turn.

He stopped in the shadow of a birch, watching her. Her face looked tired. Lines of grieving were carved around her mouth, on her brow. Carrying the weight of the unendurable was slowly leaving its indelible mark. Crowley could have vanished the visible toll with a thought, of course, but the impulse died as quickly as it came. In her place, he wouldn't have wanted to be healed.

As if she sensed a spectator, she rose and closed the curtains. The downstairs rooms went dark. Crowley observed a single shadow on the walls, an isolated figure ascending a stair. A lone lamp turned on, framed in an upstairs window, dim in the gathering night. He waited, patiently, silently. He had nowhere to be. The only person he might have been meeting was gone.

At last, the light extinguished. He closed his eyes. He did not need to see anything else to know that another soul lay sleepless, only a hundred feet away.

Crowley hesitated, listening to the distant traffic, and then tried to imagine what it would be like if Aziraphale's accident had meant the end of their lives together. If, one morning, they had woken up in the same bed, and then, for no reason at all, it suddenly became the very last time, forever.

Humans, he thought, had a strength that he simply did not have.

He opened the bag he had brought and took out the first of the bulbs.

It was grimy work, but he had always secretly had a fondness for gardening. He labored slowly, turning over the dark earth with care, breathing in the sharp scent of soil as his fingers and knees grew stained. He had brought a trowel, too, and kneeling there in the shadows, the fallen angel slowly cut out the necessary hollows, one by one, holes which reminded him unpleasantly of tiny graves. Above him, the moon moved slowly across the sky, as all-seeing and cruelly passive as God.

The hours passed. The horizon paled. Crowley rubbed his hands together, wishing away the dirt, as he looked at his handiwork. Loamy earth, blacker than the night, now stretched down both sides of the driveway and piled up high under the mailbox. Carefully he smoothed it with a thought, summoning detritus and duff to cover the torn earth, so that his trespass was not immediately visible.

When he finished, it was almost impossible to tell that he had done anything at all.

He looked up at the window a final time, and then he left.

*

He was napping on the sofa, face buried in a tartan scarf, when the cottage door creaked open. Instantly, he was awake. They had no visitors. The sound could only mean one thing.

He sat up. From the doorway, a pair of storm-blue eyes looked back at him.

“Hello,” said Aziraphale, sounding hesitant, as Crowley got to his feet.

The demon approached, feeling his pulse quicken, as he sized him up – for Aziraphale was indeed a _him_ again, neither young nor a woman, not any more. This body was also taller than the last one had been, although that wasn't saying much; it was still shorter than the average man. It was noticeably round-bellied. The nose was different. The chin was, to be perfectly frank, rather weak. The hair was still fair, although verging on sandy, and Crowley could see that it was graying at the temples. Overall, the impression it gave was rather professorial, he thought. It spoke of spectacles, and dissertations, and dust.

"Not quite as pretty as the last one," said Aziraphale, cautiously, looking back at him. He seemed nervous, and even with the comment, it took the demon a minute to understand why.

"You," he said, his voice made harsh by disbelief, when the reason finally dawned on him, "are an idiot."

And he crushed their mouths together, right there in the doorway.

"My dear," Aziraphale said, in bafflement, when he was able to breathe again. "Crowley – are you – are you _crying?_ "

"No," Crowley said firmly.

“It wasn’t even a month,” Aziraphale protested, touching his cheek.

Crowley had no words. He was thinking of a bookshop in flames. Hours when he had thought he had lost the chance to say goodbye. And that had only been hours.

He kissed the angel again, frantically, already tugging his belt open. Need had him in her ruthless grip, a feeling far closer to panic than lust. He slid his hands up under Aziraphale’s shirt, learning the unfamiliar paunch of his belly, the feeling of this new skin under his hands.

“Let me get in the door, at least,” said Aziraphale, who was beginning to be amused, and he locked it, too, for good measure. Then he cupped Crowley’s face and returned the kiss, breathing, “I missed you too, my dear.”

For his sake, Crowley pretended that that was all it was.

*

Afterwards, spent, they lay partly entwined, letting their breathing return to normal. Aziraphale’s head was pillowed on Crowley’s arm, and the demon carded his fingers through the fair hair, memorizing the foreign shade. The angel sighed, shifting into the touch, looking contented. Crowley pressed his mouth to the top of his head and tried to relax. They had nothing they needed to do, nowhere to be. And yet, he thought, the sun was still setting; the world still turned. They would have to get up eventually. This moment would pass, as all things did.

Shadows lengthened. The room grew dark. Aziraphale did not move. Crowley examined his new face, its features and proportions, its angles and curves. A terrible, terrible fear had its fangs in him.

"Don't ever leave me," he said, quietly.

He had thought his lover had fallen asleep, but the blue eyes opened and stared back at him. "No, of course not," Aziraphale said, sounding startled, almost affronted. "I never will."

It wasn't good enough. Words alone could never be good enough. But Crowley supposed it would have to do.


	5. The Blooms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a theory that demons become demons because they see the cracks in the system, and then the terrible irony is they then become tasked with widening those cracks.
> 
> I have a second theory that sometimes it takes loving someone with faith to begin to understand redemption.
> 
> Anyway, Happy Easter, fandom. This is the last of the vignettes that I had planned, so I am marking this series as complete.

 

 

 

Usually, when they had cause to celebrate, they made the drive to London and visited their old favorite haunts: the Ritz, St. James’s park, the view of Parliament across the Thames. But, that morning, as they climbed in the Bentley, Aziraphale suggested a detour, and Crowley, who could deny him nothing today of all days, obediently turned the car towards Kent.

As he drove, he kept catching little glimpses of Aziraphale’s small smile out of the corner of his eye. It was tiny, barely visible: an almost secretive quirk of the lips. It made something flutter in his stomach. Normally, when the angel was happy, he was incandescent, Crowley knew, but this was something else entirely. Something more personal than simple joy, and also more private. Something matronly, if he had to give it name.

He had first seen the expression thirty years ago, when the angel became a grandparent. He had been expecting to see it again for some months now.

Hiding his own grin, he put in a tape, and they listened to Freddie Mercury’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major as the South Downs receded behind them.

It was a perfect morning for a drive. Crowley almost resented the fact that they had no plans to go any farther as they pulled into the driveway of the Leeds Castle grounds. As they paid the admission fee, other visitors pushed past them, anxious to get on the shuttle for the fortress itself; Aziraphale, however, turned towards [the Woodland Gardens](https://www.leeds-castle.com/Attractions/Grounds+%26amp%3B+Gardens), apparently favoring the paths with fewer crowds. Crowley kept pace with him, still watching him sidelong, not wanting to miss the softness in his eyes.

He did have to admit that his counterpart, as usual, had chosen well. The grounds, and especially the gardens, were sublime. Everything in sight was blooming. Daffodils and narcissi nodded their yellow heads at the immortal couple, giddy beside statelier rows of scarlet tulips. Forsythia blazed with gold next to the jewel tones of the first rhododendrons. Even the occasional dandelion seemed as brilliant as a star, lent majesty by the company of a jubilant spring.

Among these glories strolled one angel and one demon, pausing at last under the gnarled arms of a willow, listening to the song of the river. Together they looked across the water at the ancient walls.

“Almost three kilograms each,” said the angel, at last, and he sighed. “That poor woman.”

“Azira?” Crowley said. It was a disingenuous question; he simply wanted to make Aziraphale smile with the spoken reminder of his granddaughter’s name. It worked, as it always did. “She can handle it.”

“Even so,” said Aziraphale, with fervor, as they turned and climbed the stairs to the continued footpath. “Giving birth is not a picnic.”

“Believe it or not, angel, that’s fairly common knowledge.”

The angel was only half listening. “I just can’t believe that Grace is a _grandmother_.”

“And you’re a great-grandmother, now,” Crowley said, half teasing him. He prodded the angel in his soft stomach. “You look pretty good for your age, you know.”

“Very funny,” said Aziraphale, but he was smiling again.

Crowley looked at him, at the sunlight limning his hair, the satisfaction in his eyes. He was reminded powerfully of another spring morning, over six decades ago now, when they had gone to ride the swan boats in Boston, in the final hours before a different baby had been born. The vehemence and vastness of his feelings for this other being suddenly flooded him, overwhelming him, as potent in this moment as they had been then. He swallowed hard.

As if sensing his sudden emotion, the angel gave him a reassuring nudge. “We sent lilies, by the way.”

“They have lilies,” Crowley said, absently. He was still trying to get himself under control.

“What, from the service?” Aziraphale frowned, casting the demon a sidelong glance. “That would be quite the miracle.”

“Ah.” Too late, he realized his mistake. “Yes, well. Yes. You’re right. It would be.”

“It would be,” the angel echoed, “and yet, they have lilies?”

Crowley scuffed at the turf and did not answer.

“You’re not telling me something,” Aziraphale said, with growing interest, watching him.

The demon sighed. His lover was incorrigible. When he latched onto something, he was like a terrier. It would be easier to just admit to his foolish actions, and get the embarrassment over with, than to face the inevitable escalation of questioning.

“Crowley,” the angel murmured. Insistent.

“It was nothing,” Crowley said. “It was stupid.”

“But you did something.”

“I did,” he admitted.

Aziraphale waited patiently. Crowley blew out a long breath and looked down at a cluster of narcissi. Looking at their luminous petals, he found that he was transported, remembering the sensation of kneeling in the darkness, tamping down earth over dozens of bulbs.

“It was a while ago now,” he hedged. “Three years ago.”

“What?”

“You know.” He gestured. "When you died.”

“When I was discorporated,” Aziraphale said, still looking at him curiously, and Crowley winced at the correction. He had already revealed too much. 

“Yes. Um.” He cleared his throat. “That month, I went to Leominster.”

He told the angel, in halting words, what he had done. After a moment, Aziraphale’s hand found its way into his, and the angel squeezed his fingers, tightly.

“That was good of you,” he whispered.

“It wasn’t.” Uncomfortable, Crowley kicked at a rock, watched it skid down the path ahead of them. “It was,” and he searched for the word, “Inadequate.”

“I don’t think,” Aziraphale said softly, “that Paulina would agree with you.”

They had stopped walking. They were on the crest of a grassy knoll, looking down into the dozens of people milling about, enjoying the magnificent day. But Crowley suddenly found that his mood had soured.

“It reminded me why I Fell,” he admitted, in a rush.

Beside him, he felt Aziraphale flinch, heard the quick intake of breath. “It _what?_ ”

It was something that, by unspoken agreement, they did not talk about. The demon, however, was not feeling discreet. Bitterness had him abruptly by the throat.

“What kind of God would let her die like that?”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale began, shocked, but the words suddenly demanded to be said, boiling up like bile, vomiting out of him.  

“Why allow death at all? Why kill off your own Creation? Why crucify a son? Why,” and he figured he might as well say it, “why let one of the heavenly host be raped? Even if there is an ineffable plan – to let these things happen, to let so much misery be a part of it – what kind of God,” he spat, “would permit that kind of flaw? It’s needless, is what it is. Aziraphale, it’s – it’s sick.”

He found that he was breathing hard. They had had something like this conversation a dozen times before – _Why not put the tree on top of a high mountain? Or on the moon?_ – but Crowley had always previously been able to conceal his rage. Loving someone else this much stripped that ability away, apparently.

There was a long silence.

Crowley bit his lip. Shame was already creeping over him. What the hell had he been thinking? They had been having such a nice morning; the twins had only just been born. Trust him to go and ruin it all, for no justifiable reason. Selfish, he told himself. Stupid.

At last, he glanced at Aziraphale, bracing himself for the angel’s righteous anger, or, more likely, his disappointment.

And then he blinked.

To his utter mystification, the angel was _beaming_ at him. The unearthly storm-blue eyes held only love and, inexplicably, joy. For a long moment, Crowley was adrift in their depths, unable to find his footing. He was sinking. He was lost.

As he stared back, not understanding, Aziraphale, without saying a word, took his face in his hands and kissed him.

Well,  _kiss_ was an understatement, Crowley thought. It was fierce, thorough, unashamed in front of God and man alike; to the demon’s deep horror, the latter included every single other person on the grounds. Aghast, he opened his mouth to protest, but Aziraphale only pulled him closer. He felt himself go hot with mortification as he tried to tug free. The angel’s grip, he discovered, was unyielding.

Someone whistled. A few seconds later, to Crowley's consternation, there was also a faint smattering of applause. He strongly considered just changing into a snake and slithering out of there. He did manage to resist, but not by much.

“What was that for?” he hissed, when Aziraphale finally released him.

The angel touched his mouth with a thumb, still looking at him with shining eyes. “Crowley,” he said. “You even went and planted those flowers, and you still don’t know.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Crowley snapped. His ire was rising. It had just been such an inappropriate response.

Aziraphale paused. He appeared to be choosing his words with care.

“You’re not wrong,” he said slowly. “There is misery in this world, and we all have to live with it, without knowing why. But, dear heart, that isn’t God. God is in _this,_ ” and he held up their hands, still joined. Crowley stared at him, and Aziraphale went on gently. “God is in the lilies.”

 

 

 

 


End file.
